Seminary: Giving a Devotional

An important element to helping seminary students to learn how to understand scripture is by giving them the opportunity to give devotionals.  This is not meant to be an activity that should be hastily done the last minute.  The student should take the time to think about the scripture or topic in which the devotional is going to be about.  They should not just read the scripture or topic but should know the background and personal application for the scripture or topic.

Another element of doing devotionals is to help the students to be more prepared for opportunities to speak in Church as well as to be more prepared for life after graduation, mission, college, work...  After graduation these students will have times where they will be asked and expected to stand up in front of others and express their ideas with confidence.

In my oppinion the student would be best served if their devotional is based upon a scripture that is part of the specific year's study (e.g. we are studying the Book of Mormon so the scripture should be a verse or verses from the Book of Mormon).  If they are allowed to select any scripture or topic then they will just reuse devotionals from previous years and are not increasing their scope of understanding of the scriptures.  Plus it can help to encourage more thought about the verses that they are reading in nightly study.  If they are not doing nightly study then this might at least get them to have one night for evening reading or might even inspire additional reading.  Lastly if they are preparing from the same scriptures that you are studing in class then they might be more prepared for your lessons and might make the lessons a little more proactive.

I have included a link to a document that could help assist the student in preparing their devotional (download).  This document has a section for the student to write down the background for the scripture, the scripture itself and the personal application for the scripture.  It should be encouraged to not use lengthy scriptures, and the overall devotional should only be about 5 minutes in length.  Any less than that and the student will not get as much out of it.  Any more and the audience will be lost (it is 6 am after all).  Plus you do not want it to eat into your lesson plan too much.